While most non-Thais living in Thailand wouldn’t dream of watching a Thai lakorn, I absolutely love them. My Thai skills, however, aren’t always good enough to understand everything that’s going on, which is why I watch most of my Thai lakorns on YouTube – uploaded with English subtitles, of course. (It’s also a great way to improve your Thai comprehension skills, by the way!).
My latest Thai lakorn addiction is a 2014 series called ‘Wiang Roi Dao‘, or ‘Home of a Hundred Stars’. It stars Thai soap opera actors Taew Nataporn (who also starred in Tawan Chai Nai Marn Mek and Suparburoot Jutathep), Smart Krissada Pornweroj (Qi Pao and Ruk Pathiharn) and Donut Manasnan Panlertwongskul (Yod Rak Nak Soo and Khun Seuk).
Wiang Roi Dao tells the story of Roi Dao, a young Thai woman who was adopted by a couple as a baby and then taken to England. In an horrendous car accident years later, Roi Dao is left blind and both her parents are killed. But, after an operation to restore her sight, she suddenly starts to see the ghost of a young woman.
At this point, she also finds a diary written by her father and when she reads it she discovers for the first time that her parents were not her natural parents.
Soon after, when she is asked to return to Thailand, a country she hasn’t been to since she was a baby, to hear the reading of her father’s will, she decides to go as she believes part of the mystery of the ghostly woman she is seeing may lie there.
Wiang Roi Dao is quite scary as Thai lakorns go. It’s also very well acted, has an exciting storyline and, as it takes place in 1964, it gives you a look back into Thai history and the culture that existed then.
You can watch Wiang Roi Dao with English subtitles in its entirety on YouTube (well, there is part of one episode missing, but you can still figure out what happened from subsequent videos). You can start watching the series in the first video below. And, yes, I highly recommend it as I absolutely loved it.
